With two wins and a draw in their first three Youth Alliance Cup group matches, the young U`s were handily placed to go into the knock out stages of the competition, needing only to finish in the top five out of eight in the division.

Injuries affected the side as Kyelan Marvell, Adam Bailey-Dennis and striker Jimmy Pirie were all missing, along with Fabian Quintyn, who is still out on work experience out at Welling.

Without really playing that well in the first period, the U's nearly managed to get to half time on level terms, but  conceded twice in five minutes in the moments leading up to the break.

First Ben Griffiths conceded a penalty and then a second was put away as a header found the back of Jack Smelt's net from a Gillingham corner kick.

Very little had been seen from Colchester United and their only real chance in the game came to Perry Sansford, but he missed from eight yards out.

To cap a bad day, another penalty was conceded, this time by Mitchell Nelson and the Gills netted their third goal of the game with ten minutes remaining, making the final score 3-0.

In truth, it was not a great game with only a few bright moments for the U`s, including encouraging displays from Nathan Speed and James Hammond at the back.

Mitchell Nelson also did well in midfield, as did Sam Corcoran when he came on as a sub, but it was not a morning to remember for Mel Jeffries and Steve Downey.

Colchester will need to bounce back next week, when they travel down the A12 to take on Leyton Orient and will need to secure more points to make sure that they remain high enough in the table to qualify for the next stages of the competition that they reached the final in the last two seasons.

Team: Jack Smelt, Nathan Speed, Ryan Amass, James Hammond, Ben Griffiths, Jamie Wright, Josh Oakley, Mitchell Nelson, Jeremiah Olusanya, Russell Malton, Perry Sansford.

Subs: Sam Corcoran, Alex O`Leary, Louis O`Sullivan